


Pantomime

by lacrimalis



Category: POKÉMON Detective Pikachu (2019)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Origin Story, Second Person Narration, Why Is Mr. Mime A Criminal Informant, gender neutral protagonist, inquiring minds want to know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 18:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19362499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacrimalis/pseuds/lacrimalis
Summary: How does a Mr. Mime become a criminal? Or a criminal informant, for that matter?CW: I'm Going To Make You Feel Bad For A Joke Character





	1. Chapter 1

Ryme City was the nearest locus of human activity, and you were drawn to it in its fledgling state. It was busy and disorganized, still half-under construction, but it was lively and eclectic and awe-inspiring to a young Mime Jr who had never seen a human city before.

It was there that you met your partner.

You'd found him performing in the street with a hat upturned hopefully towards passersby. His white face paint and bright clothes had resonated with your sense of style, to say nothing of the delight that was his mime routine. You ran up, unselfconscious in your enthusiasm, and began mimicking him.

A lot more money landed in the upturned hat when you were performing together, the spectators cooing and sighing at the sight of an adorable Pokemon engaging with the street performer.

As the sun descended behind the skeletal skyscrapers, he packed up his bag of props, and you mimicked these motions, too. When he sat on the curb and picked up his hat, you sat in his lap, which he seemed content to let you do.

You watched curiously as he began to flip through the paper slips and tiny metal discs that strangers had left in his hat. Noticing your interest, he handed you one of the discs. It had a raised image of a Meowth's face on one side, and its distinctively curled tail on the other. It shone in the pre-dusk light, and you held it up against the sky to admire its shine.

"This is a lot more than I usually get," he said, and you looked up at him in surprise. He hadn't spoken at all as the day wore on, and you had begun to suspect that, like you, he didn't speak at all. "Thanks for the help, little guy."

The easy praise made you smile, and you helped him organize the discs into little piles by size and color.

When he tucked the discs and paper slips into his bag and stood, you fell into step beside him without a second thought. He blinked down at you in surprise, then smiled warmly. "Goin' my way?"

You nodded eagerly, and he laughed.

"Okay. Let's get takoyaki."

He led you to a busy sidestreet filled to the brim with food stalls, where the smell of fried delights and sugary sweets pervaded the air and made you sigh with pleasure.

After handing over some of his paper and discs, he came away from one of the stalls with a paper bag covered in grease spots and two paper cups. He tilted his head, indicating you should follow, and you walked until the pedestrian traffic petered out and the street widened into a partially unpaved fountain square.

"I guess they're going to turn this place into a park," he said, sitting on the fountain's edge and putting down his bag and cups. "But for now it's unfinished, so it's not too busy here."

 _Your_ preference was the busier the better – that was the whole reason you came to the city, after all! But you acknowledged that he must be tired after a long day of standing in the sun. And since you'd decided to stick with him, you were more than happy to go where he was most at ease.

You climbed onto the fountain's edge to sit beside him, and the fountain's centerpiece caught your eye. It was an ornate stone pillar, atop which were three statues: a Squirtle, a Wartortle, and a Blastoise. The Pokemon sculptures faced outward with pursed lips, as if they were about to issue forth a stream of water. But the fountain was dry as a fossil.

"They'll turn the water on when this area is finished," the human explained, noticing your puzzlement. "But the city probably doesn't see a point to it now, since no one comes this way."

The human reached into the paper bag and pulled out a greasy breaded ball, which he popped in his mouth. Then he pulled out another, and he offered it to you. You accepted the unfamiliar food and sat down, examining it closely. It was almost too warm to hold in your hands, and it was twice the size of your mouth. You nibbled on it cautiously, but needn't have worried. It was good.

You bounced up and down to let him know you liked it, and the human laughed again.

"That good, huh? Well, you earned it."

It takes you a while to finish eating – mostly because when you bite away the outer shell of bread, there's a hard-to-chew red filling you can't identify, and you're thoroughly distracted from eating by your inspection of the mysterious, firm substance. Object?

Either way, the human had eaten it, so you figured it was fine.

"Here," he said, nudging one of the paper cups over to you. At your questioning look, he explained, "It's tea. It's good for you."

You struggled with the plastic lid, and the human helpfully removed it so you could smell the sweet aroma. You didn't like sweet things, so you weren't sure you would like _this –_ but when you tried it, it was bitter! You gulped it down and had to pant harshly to cool down the inside of your mouth.

"Careful, it's pretty hot."

You nodded weakly. You had noticed.

You were still pretty small back then, so you could only eat one more takoyaki ball before you were full. By then the last slivers of natural light had receded beyond the skyline and out of view, and the street lamps outside the park had come to life. The occasional phone screen illuminated a distant human's face, and a Pokemon's glowing eyes would flash in the darkness every once in a while, but these were the only other light sources the city had to offer.

Even the stars above were blotted out by the city's light reflecting off the clouds.

"Wanna come back to my place? It's not much, but it beats being out all night. You're probably tired, too."

You nodded, and the human picked you up to set you on his shoulder. From there you could see a lot more, and you marveled at the sights the city had to offer this novel point of view.

* * *

So things were good for a while.

You eventually learned that the human called himself Milroy ("Milroy the Mime!" he'd said with a wink, and at the time you'd thought there wasn't a cleverer thing in the world than that simple, alliterative epithet).

You would join him when he went out to the streets to perform during the day, and in the evenings you would come back to his modest apartment to relax and drink tea and develop new mime routines. Mostly you just agreed with whatever he came up with, but he'd admitted more than once that having you around inspired him.

"I know miming is my profession," he'd said once, "but miming is kind of your life, right?"

Not _all_ of your siblings had doubled down on the mime thing, but you had, so you could only nod at his assumption.

"So how could I not be inspired? I'm flattered, actually. I feel like it's a commentary on my skill that a Mime Jr chose me as a partner…" He trailed off then, looking hesitant. "Actually, we haven't really discussed it. Uh, do you _want_ to be partners?"

You smiled and jumped up and down, nearly spilling your tea, and Milroy laughed and reached out to stop your cup from toppling over onto the milk crate you were using as a coffee table. "Okay, okay! I get it," he insisted, but you could tell he was fighting back a smile.

So you became partners. It had seemed like an easy choice, at the time.

 _Everything_ had seemed easier back then, when your partnership was shiny and new, and Ryme City still paid monthly stipends to incentivize living there. It wasn't like the wild, where strange Pokemon would challenge each other over territory disputes and food shortages. It was peaceful, and food was plentiful.

It was too good to last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Mime Jr are attracted to populated areas, hence why our brave protagonist goes to Ryme City.  
> 2\. The takoyaki is Octillery! Sounds illegal to me, but I'm not a Pokemon lawyer.  
> 3\. Mr. Mime was named in Gen 1 before breeding and gender mechanics were implemented. And since the Japanese name is the genderless "Barrierd", Gen 2 introduced Mr. Mime with a 50/50 gender ratio. This in mind, I wanted to leave the gender unclear, so I chose 2nd person narration. It also has the added bonus of providing more insight into Mr. Mime's thoughts, since... they don't really talk...
> 
> Thanks for reading!! I love Mr. Mime


	2. Chapter 2

You've never needed much sleep. You went to sleep later and woke earlier than Milroy, and there were times early on in your partnership when you would wake him to play, and he would be frustrated with you.

"C'mon, Mime, I gotta go to bed," he would say. "Humans need eight hours of sleep. Go play in the living room or something."

Eight hours seemed like a lot of time to waste staring at the backs of his eyelids, but you didn't want him to be too tired to perform the next day. So you hopped down from the bed and went into the living room like he'd asked.

At first you filled your time by reading books and magazines Milroy had around the apartment. There were a good several dozen, but you had read all of them within a week (the intelligence of Psychic types is no urban legend). When you turned the final page of the last novel in the apartment, it was deep into the hours of the night, and Milroy was dead asleep. You'd have to wait for him to wake up, if you were to ask for any more reading material.

You got up from the couch and wandered the darkened apartment, tidying up the odd misplaced shoe or fallen receipt for lack of anything better to do.

Amidst this idle busywork, you passed the sliding glass door out to the balcony and stopped in your tracks. You'd grown familiar with the way the city looked from Milroy's third floor apartment, but the two of you never spent much time out on the balcony. There wasn’t any patio furniture out there to make it comfortable, for one thing. For another, the evenings were growing colder, to the point that Milroy had to wear even more layers under his colorful costume when you went out to perform.

The cold didn't particularly bother _you,_ but you liked the little blue scarf he'd given you so much that you wore it all the time anyway.

Maybe it would be nice to take in the cool midnight air, instead of admiring the view of the city through a pane of glass.

You jumped for the handle, but you couldn't quite reach it. After a few more attempts, you realized you wouldn't be able to open the door, even if you _could_ reach the handle. It was too heavy for you.

If you were a Mr. Mime, this wouldn't have been a problem. You had felt the urge to evolve growing inside you lately, but you'd pushed it down because you didn't feel ready. You didn't know much about the process of Pokemon evolution, and you didn't really know how or who to ask. What was it like? Would it hurt? Would you turn into someone very different?

Surely you didn't have to _evolve_ just to open a door. The payoff of that seemed minor when held up against the existential mystery of evolution.

You glared at the door and wished it would just _open._

Then the latch flipped, and the door slid open.

… Did _you_ do that?

You stepped outside onto the unfurnished balcony, and imagined the door closing behind you. It obliged by sliding shut immediately. Now _that_ was a handy trick. You smiled, already considering the possibilities this introduced to your mime routine with Milroy – 

"Oh, hey," said a voice, and you jumped in alarm.

The voice had come from the balcony next door, and when you turned you saw a Sneasel snickering in a lawn chair.

"'Sup, lil' dude?"

By increments you relaxed, and you approached the edge of the balcony curiously. A humming air handler dispensed cold air into the cold night, and you climbed onto this to reach the banister that framed the balcony. The Sneasel crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows at you as you sat atop the banister triumphantly.

You smiled and waved.

The Sneasel snorted. "Cute," she said. "Kinda cold out here for a little thing like you, isn't it?"

You shook your head – the cold wasn't so bad – and pointed at the Sneasel in turn, as if to say, _What about you?_

"Me? Uh, I'm an Ice type, kid." The Sneasel lifted one clawed hand, and when her fingers stiffened, ice crystals swirled to life in her palm – like she held an invisible snow globe.

You clapped, delighted, and the Sneasel huffed out a laugh. _"You're_ easily entertained, I see." She held out her hand and blew the glittering crystals toward you. An icy wind flew by, and a flurry of snow swirled on the floor of the balcony as you watched.

You clapped even more enthusiastically at this display, and the Sneasel turned away. "All right, quit it. You're making me blush."

You stopped clapping, and an only slightly-awkward silence descended between you. You took the opportunity to look out on the cityscape that you'd come outside to admire. The sounds of cars and construction, of human and Pokemon voices, rose up on the evening air in a strange and heartening harmony. You breathed it in and sighed, satisfied.

"Nice night," the Sneasel observed, and you nodded in agreement. "So, I haven't seen you around here before..."

At the implicit invitation, you launched into a pantomime of your life in the city so far with Milroy. The Sneasel indulged your efforts by asking clarifying questions and repeating the things she thought you had said. Mostly, though, she needed few corrections. You were a skilled mime, after all, and your neighbor was extremely perceptive.

"Huh," Sneasel said once you had finished. "Sounds like you lead an interesting life."

This was true enough – but you realized it might be rude to go on at length about yourself without returning the question. You gestured to Sneasel invitingly.

"Ah, well… I came here because the climate suits me – and the whole, 'humans and Pokemon living in harmony' schtick, y’know?"

You nodded. You knew.

"... But my human partner gets cold all the time, so the apartment is too hot for me. Gotta sleep out here!" Sneasel laughed like it was a cheesy joke, but to you it just sounded sad. Seeing you weren't fooled, she sighed. "... Yeah. Harmonious living _sounds_ nice, but uh, some of the differences between humans and Pokemon are kind of… insurmountable." The Sneasel avoided looking at you as she spoke, instead staring out at the glittering, skeletal city. "Y'know what I mean?"

You followed her gaze, taking in the lights and sounds of the city. You didn't think you _did_ know. You and Milroy had tons in common, and you got along great, and he always took the time to try and work out what you were saying. You could _imagine_ that Sneasel's evolutionary adaptation to the cold was a big hurdle in communal living, and you could clearly _see_ that she was troubled by that… But could you really say you _knew,_ that is, that you understood…?

Sneasel seemed to take your extended silence as a 'no', because she laughed ruefully and said, "Hey, that's a good thing! Here's hoping you never find out, kid."

You felt bad for failing to understand Sneasel’s point, but she didn’t dwell on it. You chatted amiably for another hour or so, until Sneasel caught you yawning and sent you to bed with a borrowed book. 

When you think back to that conversation, you sometimes wish you could tell Sneasel you understand, now. She was never the sort to take gratification in the pain of others, so it wouldn’t make her happy, exactly.

But maybe you can commiserate over your mutual disappointment in the human race, if you ever run into her again.


End file.
